by G Lawrence
Or so I thought then.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Windsor Palace
1525
When a simple accident occurred, a flame seemed to be lit within Henry of England, causing him to take action we hardly imagined, and placed the question of the royal succession at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
Henry had been out hunting with his gallants. It was a normal enough start to a hunting trip. The King and his men, my brother included, were hunting with the hawk in Hertfordshire. Food and servants had accompanied them on the trip; hunting was now Henry’s favourite pastime. After the joust at which he had been in peril of his life, such tournaments were held less frequently at court. Perhaps it was his unspoken fear; that if he died now, without a male heir, then his country would be in great peril. Henry knew that his duty as King was to provide an heir for prosperity and security of his realm. His father had done such a duty; even after he lost his elder son, his second son was there, able to take the throne. Perhaps, in the most secret places of his soul, Henry feared to undertake the joust too often, for fear of endangering his life once more.
No one spoke of this to him, of course; to question the vigour of the King in any way would incur his immediate displeasure, and dismissal from court. But the accident had caused physical problems for the King. He had been slow to recover from his various injuries. George told us that Henry had headaches that caused him such pain that he would chew on his pillows and cry out through gritted teeth. At such a time his temper was like that of a demon, and none wished to serve him if they had any other choice.
But the headaches and the other health issues caused by the fall did seem now to be on the wane. In the meantime, hunting was enough to sate the King’s appetites for exercise and adventure. And so, on this one of many hunting trips, Henry’s life, and the safety of our nation were called into question by the slightest and silliest of accidents. George related the tale to the family, one night as we gathered in our father’s apartments at Windsor Castle.
“We were riding through the country when we approached a ditch, wide enough that the horses might risk their necks trying to jump it, and with steep muddy sides. The ditch was filled with pungent mud that smelt… although not reeking with illness, it still had a musty and not pleasant smell to it. I suggested that we ride around, but His Majesty was taken with a grand impulse to vault the ditch using one of the long hunting spears that a servant carried. The Duke of Suffolk then wagered a bag of coin against me that His Majesty could complete the vault with ease.”
George broke off to give us a cynical look that spoke volumes as to Suffolk’s sycophantic nature and continued. “The King was then determined. Although none of us wished to bet against him, the King insisted that Norris and I take up the wager. He took the spear and took several runs to the side of the ditch, measuring up the distance. All this time, I was thinking that the ditch really looked a lot wider than I had previously thought, but there is no saying no to His Majesty when he decides on something. Henry squared up, ruffled his shoulders, and ran towards the ditch. He leapt, thrusting the pole into its very centre. He flew across the expanse and for a moment I thought that he would make it. But suddenly, as he was almost over the ditch, the pole, under the weight of his body, broke, and Henry fell headlong into the filth!” George gave a strange, strained grin to our father who was watching him with narrowed eyes.
“We could not help but laugh,” said George, shaking his head and not looking as amused now as he had been then, apparently. “Everyone was wiping the mud and filth, that had been thrown at us as the King hit the water, from their eyes and faces. But when my vision cleared, I saw that rather than sitting in the ditch, as I supposed he would be, all I could see of Henry were two great legs flailing in the air. Our king was buried, head-first, in the muck with no way to breathe or draw air.”
George grimaced at our father’s darkening face. “There was sudden panic, although not amongst all of us, it seemed; Suffolk, Compton and Norris were still doubled up with laughter and had not seen the danger that Henry was in. Bryan called out in horror, seeing that the flailing of the King’s legs was growing more urgent and that His Majesty was perhaps in danger of his life. One of the guards leapt into the water and hauled Henry from the grasp of the sticky mud. They all stopped laughing when they saw His Majesty, purple and red in the face, spitting out morass and mire, and choking. The King retched and vomited on the grass as they heaved him out. He was clasping his hands to his head in pain. He couldn’t even speak, lying on the grass, still vomiting…. Poyntz got him on a horse and we rode for the lodge. He was in terrible pain with his head, and we finally found a physician.” George shook his head glumly. “The King would not speak of what happened,” he said. “And he had to take to his bed for two days before the headaches ceased.”
Our father lifted his eyebrows. “The King is a proud man.” He shook his head and glared at his son. “I think that we should step more carefully with the life of our liege lord, George,” he warned. “Although I realise that convincing His Majesty to not do something that he has set his mind on is an onerous and dangerous task, perhaps there are some times when we should consider that this country has no male heirs to its throne, none that could come to the throne easily or without unrest. Perhaps the life of our King should be more of a concern than it appears to have been to you.”
George bristled with anger, but our father, nonplussed and calm, continued, ignoring him. “I mean that you should have been the one to drag him from that mire,” he said staring into the fire and talking quietly as he thought. “Then, perhaps, you would be amongst his more favoured servants now.” Henry had recently promoted our father to the post of Lord Treasurer, but as ever, our father was on the look-out for further advancement. I watched him and felt like sighing, although it would not do to show him my true feelings. I had felt fear for George’s tale; fear for Henry, and the welfare of the King. Our father had seen what could have been a terrible accident as a chance for advancement… But then, our father had not been kissing the King in secret in the gardens of Richmond, so his feelings towards the sovereign were likely to be different to mine…
George exhaled and sat back in his chair. There was no use in arguing with our father. It was he who led our family, and he who would always have the last say on how we did things. That was how it was… then.
“Perhaps the King will begin to realise that he is not invincible,” our mother said quietly, pulling a stitch through her embroidery and watching it as she fed it through the cloth. We spoke softly when we talked of such matters; such talk was dangerous for servants to overhear.
Our father nodded at her. “The succession is as yet unsure,” he agreed. “The King is still young enough to have many children, but Katherine is not, and now I am told by our daughters and you that she has lost her courses and can no longer bear children. There is the Princess Mary, but no woman has ruled this country. I doubt that any woman would be strong enough to unite the factions growing at court or hold off the Scots or the French for long. We are a small island and there are many who would take our country from us were there no king to unite the people. Henry knows this as well as any of us. There must be a male succession to the throne of England.”
He broke off and pondered into the fire. “I think change is on its way,” he said portentously as we all stared into the glowing ashes of the dying fire. It was late, the darkness outside was growing and the evening was cold.
“Change is on its way,” he said again; our father was rarely wrong.
It was not long after this time that the King indeed made steps to assure the succession; although he did not express such sentiments in word or proclamation, we all knew that the matter was on his mind. It started with the bastard boy of Bessie Blount, Henry Fitzroy, who was taken from the life he had been living in relative, although richly lavish, obscurity, and brought to London.
The child was six years old when he was voted into the Order of
the Garter, the highest order of knights in England, headed by Henry himself. He was installed on the 7th of June in St George’s Chapel in Windsor and took the place of precedence next to his father in the following ceremony. Then, on the 18th of June, there was a ceremony to create multiple peerages amongst the nobles of court. It was the first such occasion since 1514, and Henry Fitzroy was created Duke of Richmond and Somerset and Earl of Nottingham. These titles had previously belonged only to members of the royal family; to the Beauforts, to Henry VII and to a younger brother of Henry VIII who had died in infancy.
To anyone who could read the signs, there was a message in the titles given to that infant lord dressed up in all his finery; Henry was placing his bastard son higher than any lord in the realm. The King had lost faith with the Emperor Charles who had not made any move to fulfil the promises of the treaty. Perhaps Henry believed that Charles would not wait for Princess Mary to grow old enough to marry either. Henry was making new plans… In Henry Fitzroy he was crafting a possible solution to the problem of the succession
I was present on the day Henry Fitzroy became a Duke. I watched the little lord as he made his way through the presence chamber at Bridewell Palace up to the throne where Henry stood under the cloth of estate, attended on by the premier nobles of the country. Suffolk, my uncle Norfolk, Cardinal Wolsey and the earls of Arundel and Oxford were all in attendance. Henry Fitzroy was dressed in a crimson and blue mantle with the giant sword of estate by his side. He carried the sword very well, I thought, considering he was only six years old. He knelt before the King and the other lords as the patents of estate were read and then, to great applause, the diminutive Duke took his place by the side of his father, taking precedence over all in the room, save the King himself.
The six year old bastard son of Bessie Blount was now next in rank only to Henry himself. He was, in essence, made a prince of the realm… ranked in the same estate as the Princess Mary, the King’s legitimate daughter. Not long after, perhaps in deference to his queen who was not pleased with the elevation of this bastard to the same rank as her daughter, Henry sent Princess Mary to Ludlow Castle, in Wales, to undertake the first steps in leaning how to rule. The same procedure had been used for Henry’s brother, Arthur, when he was heir to the throne; it was traditional for the heir to take up their own council, and to rule over some of the King’s lands, in order to gain experience and authority.
Although Katherine was, I believe, pleased that her daughter was being put forth as the official heir to the throne, and this appointment showed such, she was not happy about Mary being sent to Ludlow. Ludlow Castle was the place where Katherine’s first husband, Prince Arthur, had died in the early months of their marriage, and Katherine herself had come close to death at that time too. It was rumoured that some type of plague had taken hold of the young couple, but Katherine had recovered where her husband had not. Ludlow was, for Katherine, a place of sadness and danger. It was not a well-kept castle either, as she remembered it, but a place with many damp and ill airs. She could not refute the honour done to her daughter, but to be parted from her beloved daughter, to have Mary go to a place she feared and detested, added greatly to her sorrows. It was a mixed honour for the Queen.
There was another reason that I was in that chamber watching the promotion of a six year old to the premier estates of the land; my father was amongst those honoured at that day. Sir Thomas Boleyn was given the title of Lord Rochford. After the ceremony, however, when we were called to his chambers, I learnt that he was far from being entirely pleased, despite the new lands, grants and chambers he had been given. For in receiving the title of Lord Rochford, our father had been stripped of the office of Lord Treasurer, without any form of financial compensation. Whilst the title of Lord Rochford brought our father wealth, the loss of his position as Lord Treasurer cost him more.
“Son of a butcher’s whore!” our father hissed through gritted teeth, trying to keep his voice down, whilst anger radiated from him like lightning from a storm cloud. He was formidable in his rage, and since it was not directed at me this time, I marvelled at it, feeling slightly detached as I stood by the fire in our father’s chambers, watching him seethe and bluster. His face was that of a demon and I wondered idly whether I might look somewhat like him when my anger was raised; my temper, it seemed, had not come from our mother.
“That dirty, cow-herd’s piss! That bastard-born son of the devil! That inn-keeper’s cur!” Our father, his face red and his eyes bulging, cursed the Cardinal Wolsey, who had taken the Treasury office from him. Our mother sat, calmly sewing by the fire and looking up now and then to check where the progress of her husband’s anger had taken him. It is better at times when people are suffused with anger to let them get it all out before attempting to talk to them. George stood by too, idly playing with a book in his hands and waiting for our father to calm down.
“I worked for that position,” our father spat, ending the stream of curses that had come from his mouth by throwing himself into a chair by the fire.
“As did I,” Mary said quietly from the window seat.
Our father ignored her. “One day, I swear I shall return the favour that that Butcher’s whoreson has done me today.” His eyes narrowed with the thought of what he should do to Wolsey. “He has the King’s love and his ear for now, but one day…” he trailed off.
“I think we can be clear,” I said calmly, smoothing my gown, “that the Cardinal has no love for the Boleyns. He has taken your office, father, and he prevented the advantageous match I could have made with Henry Percy. He tried to remove George from the Privy Chamber, although my charming brother found a way to the King’s heart to get back in.” I smiled at George who grinned at me. “Perhaps he does not wish the Boleyns to grow in favour much more than we have already.” I nodded at Mary. “I believe that he sees us as a threat, which means he fears us. That is a good thing. He should fear us. We are many and he is one… and we are strong.”
My father looked at me and grunted, nodding. “You are perhaps right there,” he said. “With Mary in the King’s bed and George and myself growing in favour at court, perhaps there is enough there to worry the Cardinal.” He paused and smiled, looking most pleased suddenly. “Good!” he laughed and my mother cast me a grateful look for managing to divert father’s anger towards planning for advancement once more. “Good,” our father said again. “I long now to do nothing but worry the Cardinal,” he grinned with glee on his face. “Come, family, let us make a pact… from now on, we shall do our utmost to worry Cardinal Wolsey.”
We all agreed, although at that time, I remember thinking that the great Cardinal would still have little to worry over from the Boleyns.
Just after that time, perhaps even as we made our pact, the Cardinal made the grand gesture of presenting the King with his most fabulous possession; Hampton Court in Surrey, a palace Wolsey had built up and re-designed from a mere manor into a grand house which outshone even the palaces of the King. Henry was delighted and Wolsey was regarded in higher favour than ever.
It seemed that the Cardinal was here to stay.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Greenwich Palace
1525
At the height of the summer, on a misty afternoon as we sat sewing in Will Carey’s apartments at court, Mary confided in me that she was once again with child.
“How far are you gone?” I asked, and she told me she thought not more than a month or so.
“Do you know the father this time?” I asked with a mischievous smile.
Mary blushed, rosy and pretty. “This time I believe it is more likely to be Carey’s child than the King’s…. Will and I have grown closer these few months and the King has sent for me less and less often. Truly, these last few months I have rarely been in his bed and he seems less interested in me than ever before. I said to you some time ago that I thought his affections were waning, and now I am sure. I think there is another he wants, and soon I believe I shall be replaced as mi
stress.” She looked a little sad.
“You will miss being the King’s lover?” I asked. “I thought you were eager to be a true wife, and not be shared.”
She smiled. “Yes, but I will perhaps miss him a little; he is kind and gentle and has been good to me. There has been no scandal and there have been no hard words against me; my family and my husband have done well from the arrangement and it has been pleasant in many ways.” She paused. “But perhaps it would be nice to live with my children and see them grow up. To visit court, of course, but retire enough to enjoy Will and the children as a wife should be able to,” she touched my arm. “To own the truth, Anne, I am a little tired of all the politics and scheming at court, and in being the King’s mistress. I was gladder than any woman when Catherine turned out to be a girl so that she could not be thrust by our father and George into the King’s face as a possible candidate for the throne. Imagine the danger in which they would have placed my child! And all for ambition! All for power! I would wish a quieter life for my daughter and this new child than that which I have lived. Although, you, it would seem, are made for this world.”
